Ensuring your site has a favorable ranking among search results is essential today. But this competitive market can be difficult. Google’s penalties tend to be severe obstacles in this frantic race for the top spots. Site managers might get cold sweats thinking about how to get onto the first page without doing a lot of work and time. Once you’ve reached your goal, however, it’s not worth incurring the wrath of Google and getting relegated to the tenth page of results. Poor positioning in result rankings causes traffic to drop, which questions the profitability and economics of a website. That’s why knowing what can cause penalties is essential for your website. We offer helpful insights so that you have all the cards you need in hand.
What are Google’s SEO penalties?
Penalties have two origins: they result either from manual actions or from algorithmic filters.
Manual penalties
Google employees give manual penalties. The Search Quality Team is in charge of carrying out a watch to identify on the web those who try to improve the organic referencing of their site by using techniques that do not appear in its guidelines.
The owners of the targeted sites are informed via their Google Search Console interface. In the “manual actions” tab, a report tells them what they are accused of.
Google, known to like to cultivate secrecy, is showing excellent transparency. The same cannot be said for the algorithmic filters implemented by the number one search engine.
Algorithmic filters
The firm keeps repeating it: it wants to offer Internet users quality content. Faced with the rise of spam, it had to set up algorithms responsible for detecting and penalizing offenders.
The two main ones are Pandas and penguins. The first, Panda, was introduced in 2011 to combat poor-quality content. The following year, Penguin had the mission of tracking down fake links.
When a site is affected by this type of penalty, it is much more challenging to know. No message is sent to the site’s owner to warn him and explain what is wrong. You must analyze data from Google Analytics and the Search Console to find out. An unexplained drop in traffic on a page that does not respect good practices is most certainly the victim of an algorithmic penalty.
What are the consequences of the positioning of sidelined websites?
Depending on the seriousness of the facts, the penalties applied are not the same. There are three different ones:
- Downgrading, one or more pages suddenly lose their place in the results;
- De-indexing, the targeted pages disappear entirely from the search engine;
- The blocklist is the heaviest sanction. The entire website no longer exists for Google.
The common point of these three sanctions is that they impact natural referencing and therefore lead to a drop in organic traffic. If other sources of flow, such as social networks with the help of Instagram bluetick verification, do not allow the site to be maintained sufficiently, the consequences can be dramatic.
Are Google’s sanctions irreversible?
The penalties applied by the Search Quality Team and the algorithms are not final.
The most manageable penalty to lift is certainly the manual penalty. Once You know which links are penalized and why you can easily make the necessary changes. Go to the Search Console, select “Links” in the left column, and ensure no toxic or incoming links remain.
Once these corrections have been made, Google can request a re-analysis of the site from the Search Console. If all the modifications have been made, the page or pages concerned will regain their letters of nobility.
It can also correct sanctions imposed by algorithmic filters. It implies having known how to detect them. We can ensure that we take the proper corrective measures by focusing on what does not comply with the recommendations and modifying it. If done well, this work can be an opportunity to be more efficient in SEO and gain visibility.
How to avoid being delisted and suffering a drop in traffic?
To please the algorithms and be well placed on the web, you have to get into the habit of:
- Ensure that its site is regularly updated with unique and quality content;
- pay attention to the quality of the backlinks, the links that point to the site;
- have well-marked articles;
- control the loading time of your pages, the shorter the loading time, the better;
- respect the good practices defined by Google.
So, we opt for the white hat and forget the black hat. In other words, we choose authorized referencing techniques and do not try to deceive the algorithm with abusive practices.
The referencing penalties put in place by Google have only one goal: to offer quality and relevant content about the request typed by the Internet user. When you respect the rules of the game, there is no reason to fear them. If all this seems complex to you or you want to be sure of not being sanctioned, do not hesitate to call on professionals who will guide you. The editors of SEO techniques will allow you not to be banned by Google but, on the contrary, to appear in place in the SERP. Contact them!
Also, Read Whats The Difference Between Choosing And Packing For Move.
